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The Irish phrase for ‘fancy seeing you here’ or ‘you never know what you might chance upon!’ is ‘is fánach an áit a bhfaighfeá gliomach’, which literally means ‘what an odd place to find a lobster’.
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This year's Ig Nobel Prize in medicine was given to a group of researchers who proved that having an orgasm is as as effective at relieving nasal congestion as taking a decongestant medication.
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A 2015 study found that cheese can trigger a response in the same brain receptors activated by heroin. (Image: Christian Bauer, CC-BY-2.0)
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Word of the day: SHEMOMECHAMA (შემომეჭამა; Georgian) - when you did not mean to eat it all, but accidentally did
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Spam email got its name from a Monty Python sketch in which shouting ’SPAM!’ drowns out all other conversation.
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African Matabele ants carry injured colleagues back to the nest after battle to tend to their wounds. They have a triage system; dying ants aren’t treated but those missing a leg or two are. Apart from humans, they’re the only organisms known to do this.
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"Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power." P. J. O'ROURKE
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The longest-running lab experiment started in 1927 and measures how fast pitch falls from a funnel. Nine drops have fallen so far, showing pitch isn’t a solid, but a liquid 100 billion times more viscous than water. [📷: John Mainstone, University of Queensland.]
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A French man has recently won a court case affirming his right not to be "fun" at work.
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You are more likely to get a virus from a religious website than a porn website.
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The ‘mas’ in ‘Christmas’ comes from the word ‘mass’, which, in its turn, is thought to come from the Latin phrase ‘Ite, missa est’ spoken by a priest at the end of the liturgy and which can be translated as ‘Go, it is the dismissal’. So Christmas means 'go away Christ'.
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Word of the day: MERRYNEUM (neologism) - the odd week between Christmas and the New Year, mostly occupied by eating leftovers and taking naps
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The world’s deserts receive enough solar energy in six hours to power the world for a year.
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In 1949, Munich Zoo embarked on a rigorous ‘de-nazification’ programme for a parrot who’d started screaming ‘Heil Hitler’ at guests.
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The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has specifically ruled that Jeff Bezos is not an astronaut.
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At the 1936 Summer Olympics, Japanese pole vaulters Sueo Oe and Shuhei Nishida tied.
Rather than accepting a tie break, the two cut their medals in half and spliced them together to make a "friendship medal".
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Britney Spears' "Toxic" changed how people used the word "toxic".
According to research by @OxLanguages, her song helped popularise the metaphorical use of "toxicity".
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According to the UK Deed Poll Service, every week at least one person requests ‘Danger’ as a middle name.
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‘Buccaneer’ originally meant ‘one who barbeques’ from ‘boucanier’ – a 17th century French word for runaway sailors who lived in the forests of Haiti and cooked their meat on a boucan - a kind of Brazilian wooden barbecue.
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‘Vaccination’ comes from Latin ‘vacca’ (‘cow’), because Edward Jenner immunised against smallpox with the cowpox virus. At the time, horsepox-based immunisation was just as effective, so instead of vaccinating we could have easily been equinating (Latin ‘equus’, ‘horse’).
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"Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works...
Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things." DOUGLAS ADAMS
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In his 1828 dictionary, Noah Webster wrote that ‘the domestic cat needs no description. It is a deceitful animal, and when enraged, extremely spiteful’.
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"Fart" is one of the oldest words in the English language.
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The newly restored 14th century shrine of St Amphibalus at St Albans cathedral features a carving of a head wearing a facemask to commemorate the shrine’s restoration during the pandemic. (Image: St Albans Cathedral)
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A Quite Interesting Twitter feed from the team behind the BBC TV show QI.
linktr.ee/TheQIElves